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Gokukoku no Brynhildr Episode 1 Review

Gokukoku is about a boy named Ryota Murakami who played with a girl he called Kurokneko as a child. Due to an incident which leads to his hospitalization and her death, Murakami sets out to discover the truth about aliens in honour of his friendship with Kuroneko. Many years later, a student named Kuroha Neko transfers into his class and Murakami is shocked that his childhood friend has been returned to him. However, Kuroha claims that she’s never seen or met Murakami.

Another thing about Kuroha – she can predict the forecast of certain people’s deaths, or rather, she and her friends can somehow read this forecast. Along with this knowledge and some other abilities, Kuroha claims to have escaped from a hospital where experiments with drugs and surgery has given her the powers of a magician. She saves Murakami from his predicted death near the observatory and their story begins.

Rating: 4.25/5 curiously excited clouds

On first impressions, Gokukoku no Brynhildr falls in the science-fiction, mystery, dark supernatural and seinen genre. It definitely crams a lot into one episode and almost everything is thrown at * at once. Murakami, for his part, is very clever and insightful, able to deduce the befores and afters of his supposed incident resulting in his death. Kuroha seems to be her own mystery within the plot. Generally no direction in the plot has set but we’ve established that there are some supernatural forces at work here in this series.

For now I feel bad that Murakami has more or less been caught up in this world of death and science-fiction that he didn’t necessarily ask for, but his intrigue in Kuroha would have sooner or later led him into her business. Murakami is only intrigued with Kuroha because she looks so much like his childhood friend Kuroneko. When he finally sees the back of her arm to check whether or not Kuroha has the same three moles that Kuroneko had, he’s utterly disappointed at having confirmed this fact.

In Kuroha’s own fiery disaster backstory flashback, her friend Akane claims that Kuroha is the only one who can save the world. Kuroha decides that if it’s saving people from the forecast who are destined to die, even she can do that. The story seems to be mostly told from Murakami’s point of view but we are given Kuroha’s point of view from time to time and story development will soon tell us whether or not Kuroha was truly Kuroneko and if she was really Kuroneko, how did she meet Murakami, how did she get caught up with aliens and when did she lose her memories of him?

This intense sci-fi stuff isn’t really up my alley but for those of you who enjoy the mystery and intrigue of this opening will definitely want to follow this series. This series has all the basics for a really intense show judging by the dark atmosphere of the opening. The credits show Murakami with three other girls in addition to Kuroha. Harem style cast? Maybe. But there’s definitely a lot more to the story.